welcome! jeremy freese is a professor in sociology at northwestern university. he finds blogging to be a good diversion from insomnia and a far better use of time than television.

Saturday, October 09, 2004

reprinted for your convenience

The Dred Scott answer from last night's debate:

QUESTIONER: Mr. President, if there were a vacancy in the Supreme Court and you had the opportunity to fill that position today, who would you choose and why?

[...]

Let me give you a couple of examples, I guess, of the kind of person I wouldn't pick.

I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words "under God" in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process as opposed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.

That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all -- you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

And yet, as amazingly dumb an answer as this was, it still represents tremendous improvement over Shrub's performance in the first debate. Case in point: "I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that."

- as is shrub or long-jaw wouldn't replace any retiring Supreme Court Justice with a man whose political leanings they liked - to quote a verse from a civil rights song, "keep your eye on the prize - don't give up the fight". I vote for more bacon pictures and feral children stories.........